Takes: “Good Intentions Aren’t Enough”

Libya, Mussolini’s former colonial show place in Africa, and a country almost three times the size of Texas, may go down in history as the scene of the United Nations’ first successful effort to set up a brand-new independent federal state. On the other hand, if things don’t work out as planned, perhaps its greatest claim to fame will be that of having constituted one of the larger stumbling blocks in the uneven path of the United Nations. People here who foresee the latter outcome say that Libya is about to become just one more demonstration of the fact that in international affairs, as in everything else, good intentions aren’t enough, and they profess to discern an uncomfortably close parallel between the situation here and the situations precipitated at Versailles thirty-some years ago and at Yalta and Potsdam more recently.